This Round
by Hikoru Aniki
Summary: JamesLily. "Well Potter, I guess you win this round."


Lily Evans could grow to hate the Gryffindor common room. Honestly, it always was loud enough to give her a headache within the first hour. The only reason she stayed was because of **him**. Sitting in the corner, messing up his absolutely ridiculous hair, planning some other prank to pull at her expense. Lily wished that she could have just left the supervision of the common room to the Head Boy, also a Gryffindor, but knew she couldn't. Remus was usually dependable for these kinds of things, but the second you added his friends, the Marauders as they called themselves, all bets were off. She sighed and stood up, closing her textbook. They couldn't possibly blow up the room in a few minutes, and Potter would be off to Quidditch in a little while. The rest of them would wait for him to head back before causing utter mayhem.

Lily turned and began walking towards the exit. Some time in the library couldn't hurt her grades, and maybe it would get rid of the pounding of her skull.

Lily quickly made it to the library and entered her sanctuary. Potter, despite his many desperate pleas for a date, never came to the library. As a matter of fact, sometimes Lily thought he had never been there in his entire life. Pulling a dusty tome off of the shelves, she settled down in a leather armchair and immersed herself in the text.

It felt like only a few minutes later when a tap on her shoulder reawakened Lily to reality. A quick check revealed that the sunlight through the few windows nearby were tinged a dusty gold, indicating that at least an hour had passed. Craning her neck back to see who had deemed it prudent to disturb her, Lily caught a glimpse of the face of Remus Lupin, her fellow Head.

"Sorry to disturb you, but it's almost time to start rounds," Remus explained apologetically, gesturing superfluously at the dimming light in the room. Lily offered him a brief smile. Despite the fact that he was good friends with the boy she hated most, Remus was a good friend and a good Head Boy, which was good considering that they shared a dormitory and had to see him every day. If only his friends could be half as likeable as the brown haired boy with a way of making her feel at home.

"No problem, Remus," Lily replied, as he had long since requested that Lily call him by his first name, "Just give me a minute to put this back." She gracefully stood from the chair, clutching the volume. With her petite frame, Lily had to stretch up on tiptoe to replace it, but Remus had learned quickly that Lily Evans liked doing things herself. She stretched, and then turned to her partner.

"Okay, let's go," she said, steeling herself for the night ahead.

In the next half hour, they had sent two third years back to their common rooms for suspicious behavior, and Lily, wincing, had broken up two couples that seemed to believe that empty classrooms were the perfect place for….less than appropriate public behavior. The two Heads could only look forward to the time in another ten minutes when they would be off duty, and therefore free to do as they wished and hand over the keeping of the peace to a pair of prefects.

Naturally, those ten minutes couldn't simply be routine patrol work. Of course not, because Lily's life never worked that way. She couldn't help but wonder who she had offended so much to have this much bad luck. Honestly, what did she do?

Because now, with seven minutes left in her patrol with Remus, Potter just has to show up. Oh, he pretends it's a coincidence, but Lily can see that deep set glimmer in his eyes that says 'I got you' and makes Lily's most recurring fantasy one where she can smack that cocky look off of his face for good. He's just standing there, chatting with Remus as if she wasn't there, and as if Remus didn't have a job to do right now. Lily wasn't sure who to be mad at to be perfectly honest. Remus was neglecting his duties, but it was all Potter's fault….Okay, blame Potter it is.

Lily just couldn't understand why this was riling her up so much. She should be absolutely thrilled that James is pretending she doesn't exist. Every time he saw her, he usually would have some sort of elaborate way to ask her out yet again, and embarrass her. Every. Single. Time. She couldn't miss it, right? I mean, come on, Lily had been shooting him down for two full years now. She used to wish that something would happen to him over the summer to cause him not to return, but that had never worked out for her. Lily just stood next to Remus tapping her foot on the cold stone floor, trying to remind him that she was still there, but to no avail. Finally, Lily couldn't take being ignored for any longer.

"Remus! We have a job to do in case you've forgotten! You can conspire with Potter there all you want, when it's not on my time!" Lily tried to take a deep breath to retain her calm, but she knew that she probably was all but shaking with fury. How Potter could get her like this she would never know, but she could always just chalk it down to her 'Reasons I despise James Potter' list. Speaking of the devil, he now turned to face Lily, grinning delightedly, as if her outburst was exactly what he wanted.

"Oh, Lily, I didn't see you there!" he exclaimed in mock surprise. "Well, you see, Remus has something very important he has to do as of the moment, so I regret to inform you that he cannot finish the patrol with you." Remus shot Lily an apologetic look over Potter's shoulder. "However, you see, I am more than willing to walk the rest of the patrol with you and make sure no harm comes to you," Potter finished with a jovial air. Lily deadpanned.

"I think I'll finish alone, thank you," she responded in a cold clipped voice. She was right; it had been crazy to think that having Potter ignore her was worse than this. She turned and began walking past Potter down the next corridor. There were only five minutes left, she could do fine on her own and resented being treated as if she was helpless! Potter grabbed her arm as she walked by.

"No Lily, I really must insist," he said with a serious expression. Lily ignored it, Potter had already proved his skills as an actor the previous year when he had tricked her into believing that she truly had gone and injured someone during class, his intention being her seeking him for comfort. That one had backfired on him. Lily just kept walking, and Potter continued beside her. Rolling her eyes, she ignored him. There were only four minutes left now, four minutes of his company.

Potter continued on whistling jauntily, with a ridiculously pleased expression on his face. Lily decided that whistling was the most annoying noise in the world. It just sounded so damn smug, as if he believed he had won something. Ha, the only thing he had accomplished was to annoy her.

As they passed by the courtyard, Potter stopped her by way of a hand on her arm. Thoroughly irritated, Lily turned to tell him off, only to find that he was uncomfortably close to her. She felt her face flushing red, and tried to figure out why. Potter's only affect on her was to make her annoyed; Lily had long since established that fact. So why was his proximity serving to make her feel so self conscious? Lily began to back up, only to find a wall behind her, and Potter getting no further away.

"B-back off Potter," she stated as assertively as she could. Inwardly she winced at the stutter, but she could always deny it later. He didn't move, his facial expression didn't change. He looked like he was trying to memorize her, and it felt incredibly intimate. Yet she couldn't push him away. It was just about all she could do to not lean on the wall behind her for support.

Suddenly his face moved closer to hers and she felt her eyes fall inexplicably shut as she felt his breath on her ear.

_"Gotcha,"_ he whispered, and the turned and ran down the hall. Lily's mouth dropped open.

"Potter, you are so dead!" she screeched down the hall. Yet she gave a wry smile and thought to herself, _Well Potter I must admit, you win this round_. Lily straightened up from the wall, and grinning, strolled back to the common room.


End file.
